Clergy candidates help Democrats flip Congress, boosting the religious left

Mainline Protestants prevailed in key races despite decades of declining membership

Clergy members and other Democratic candidates who carried an unapologetically Christian message to “love your neighbor” helped their party flip control of Congress in the 2026 midterms, a striking result that demonstrated the strength of the religious left as a counter to the stalwart evangelical support for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans.

Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico in Texas, megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas and Iowa ministers Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James flipped key U.S. Senate and House seats. All four come from the mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran branches of American Protestantism, with moderate or progressive beliefs.

“This attempt to corner the market on Christianity by evangelicals was repudiated,” said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor and editor of a progressive faith and politics site. Unlike nationalists who want America to privilege a particular Christian worldview in public life, Kaylor said, the mainline winners backed church-state separation and sought common ground across religions, in keeping with their Christian values.

Hamilton told The Associated Press the outcome reflected a moral judgment by voters: “There were so many people in our country who felt so strongly that what was happening in D.C. was not moral. It didn’t reflect our national values.” That, he said, is why he and the other candidates ran — and why they were elected.

Mainline denominations have historically been part of the country’s civic establishment as the church home of most presidents and other elites, but their membership has been sliding for decades. The wins suggest these Protestants can still have significant influence — though not with white evangelicals.

The AP Voter Poll, a survey of roughly 100,000 midterm voters, found white evangelical Protestants stayed consistent across the board in their overwhelming support for Republicans. Most Protestants who identify as “liberal” or “moderate,” about 7 in 10, voted for Democrats, and at least 7 in 10 religiously unaffiliated voters supported the Democratic Senate and House candidates in Texas, Kansas and Iowa. White evangelicals made up 17% of the 2026 electorate, a slightly smaller share than the 21% in 2024, when Trump was running for president — a shift that could reflect lower turnout among evangelicals or higher turnout among other groups. About 2 in 10 white evangelicals voted for Talarico in Texas and Hamilton in Kansas.

Burge said the Democratic clergy members who won were strong candidates but also benefited from very favorable political winds. “If I hear a story about the Democratic Party scouting out pastors to run in 2028 based on Talarico and Hamilton, I think they’ve totally missed the upshot from this election,” he said. “It’s about economic issues. It’s about disdain for Trump. It’s about high prices.” Had Hamilton run in 2024, Burge said, “he’s beat by double digits and we’re not having this conversation.”

In the longtime GOP stronghold of Texas, Talarico flipped a U.S. Senate seat by defeating Republican Ken Paxton, an evangelical — the first election in more than 30 years in which Democrats won statewide races there. Voters also ousted Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who chaired Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission and declared, “There is no separation of church and state.”

In his acceptance speech, the 37-year-old state legislator recounted how his grandfather, a Baptist preacher, taught him about Jesus, a “barefoot rabbi” who commanded people to love God and neighbor — and not just the neighbor who looks, prays or votes like him, said Talarico, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seminarian and former middle school teacher. “Two thousand years ago, when the people at the top hurt his neighbors, that barefoot rabbi didn’t stay in his room and pray. He walked into the seat of power, and he flipped over the tables of injustice. … Texas, it’s time to start flipping tables,” Talarico said.

The wins drew criticism from the religious right. The Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor who leads First Baptist Church in Dallas and a longtime Trump supporter, maintains that the pluralistic religion promoted by Talarico and other candidates is not actually Christianity. “People want to choose a religion that’s nice and warm and fuzzy, whether it’s built on truth or not,” Jeffress said. “What James Talarico believes, according to the words of Jesus, is not true.” He attributed the Democrats’ success to a trifecta of inflation, the Iran war and “less than ideal candidates,” and suspects many evangelicals stayed home.

Hamilton, pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, called for “decency” in politics and drew on Jesus’ Golden Rule in his victory speech: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “I can’t not talk about my faith. It’s just, it’s my life. It’s what I eat, sleep, drink and breathe,” he told the AP, while adding that being religious is not required to follow the biblical injunctions “to do justice, to love kindness.” While campaigning for Hamilton’s Republican opponent, Sen. Roger Marshall, Vice President JD Vance questioned Hamilton’s religiosity. “It was so ridiculous that there was no reason to even respond to it,” Hamilton said, adding that he welcomes a conversation with Vance and other critics about faith and theology.

In Iowa, Democrats Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James, who flipped U.S. House seats, had no political ambitions when they pursued ordination. Trump’s 2016 election sparked James’ involvement. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) chaplain counts her ministry experience — from church potlucks to the pews — as a strength in connecting with voters of all backgrounds. “I spent time bringing people together across difference,” James told the AP in March. Trone Garriott, a state senator and a pastor in the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the religious right’s high profile in national politics has made some progressive Christians wary of sharing their faith publicly, but she sees power in diverse coalition building. “When people come together on our common ground, we will do powerful things,” she said in her acceptance speech.

Clergy candidates prevailed among Republicans as well, including Mark Harris of North Carolina, a Southern Baptist pastor, and Tim Walberg of Michigan, a former pastor. Black Protestants, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic and have long comfortably talked faith and politics in a way white mainliners have not, were represented among the winners by the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a Baptist from Texas, and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, a United Methodist minister from Missouri.

In North Carolina, Democrat LaKesha Womack unseated a Republican incumbent in a U.S. House race. An ordained deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a historically Black Protestant denomination, Womack told the AP her faith prompts her to advocate for “policies that address poverty and immigration and making sure everybody has access to healthcare,” and she defends religious freedom for all. “With the white Christian nationalists almost taking over the narrative of what it means to be a Christian, I think there are a lot of people of faith in this country who wanted to reclaim that narrative,” she said.

Still, Womack cautioned her party against reading too much into this year’s clergy victories. “I don’t think we should go out and try to recruit ministers to become politicians if that’s not what they’re called to do,” she said. “It has to be authentic.”